Bentley University Associate Professor of Law Marianne DelPo Kulow was recently named the 2011 Charles M. Hewitt Master Teacher by the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB), the international organization of professors who teach law in business schools. The award was announced following Kulow’s presentation as one of four finalists at the ALSB annual conference in New Orleans. 

“Doing the presentation for such a large and well-informed audience was an amazing and gratifying experience,” Kulow says. “To then win the most prestigious teaching award in my discipline was a wonderful finale to my sabbatical leave.” 

Kulow’s presentation was a mock version of a class from one of her Bentley courses, Outsiders and the Law, and was presented in way that could be adapted for use in the Legal Environment of Business course required for undergraduate business majors.  The class is on accommodating mental disabilities, and covers the federal statute that prohibits workplace discrimination based on physical or mental disability. The class includes a video clip from the film Philadelphia and asks students to practice using the statutory definitions on a hypothetical case of an employee with AIDS.  It then shifts to mental disabilities and includes a mini-lecture building up to a small group exercise where students play the role of a manager attempting to accommodate an employee with a mental illness. 

The international competition highlights the best classroom teaching as it incorporates new or evolving course subject matter, cultural shifts, advances in pedagogy, and/or advances in teaching technology -- all of which strive to encourage students to become engaged in the learning process and learn from their own efforts and from each other.